Monday, November 23, 2015

Ella Grayce Crowley


No sooner had Jack arrived than I needed to set up the Baby Crowley Pool. The Baby Crowley Pool had no name because Alycia and Trevor couldn't agree on a name for the baby. Well to state that more accurately, Alycia had many names for the baby but Trevor couldn't agree with any of them but never put forth any suggestions of his own. So, she was known as baby girl up until a few days after her arrival.

As with Sharley we made a guessing game out of baby girls arrival. I created a pool and most everyone made their guesses. As it turned out Alycia also had to be induced. I claim to have won the first pool but once she was admitted to be induced we created a second pool. Kira won that one beating Mom by eight minutes.

Mom, anticipating the eventful day took a week off of work just a few days after school started. The school does not like it when she does things like that but her attitude is (and I agree with it) family is first and if she has to choose between her job and her kids the kids will win every time. She never worked when the kids were at home and now that they're gone she can work but the kids still come first.

So Mom flew Aug 26 to be with Alycia and her due date was Aug 27. As it turned out she went into the hospital to be induced on the Aug 28. After a very quick delivery baby girl entered this world at 4:44 AM Saturday morning. We were all quite surprised by quickly it all went. Before they left the hospital they decided to name baby girl Ella Grayce Crowley. I love the name for a number of reasons. First of all it sounds like a very classy name but it also is a very "family" name in several ways.Ella Dora Darnell was my great grandmother and from all accounts she was a great woman. Grayce is also my grandmothers middle name but she spelled in Grace. Grayce is also Lisa's mothers name. It is also Alycia's middle name. It was because Lisa's mother spelled Grayce with a "Y" that we ended up putting a "Y" in Alycia's name rather than the more traditional Alicia.

A few months before Ella was born Alycia entered the "nesting" phase of her pregnancy. I have learned that as the big day arrives expectant mothers have a very strong urge to get the baby's room (and everything else) ready for the arrival. Alycia pointed out that she would love a brass light shade for the nursery and she was certain that I would be able to make it. Well I was able to make it but if I was paid by the hour for that light it would be a very expensive light. I sure hope little Ella appreciates her new light.

I will add a few pictures of Ella so you can see her first few months by you might also enjoy this short video that Alycia put together of Ellas first week.





 Off to the hospital

 Whew, it is finally over. I am told that it was a very quick but very intense delivery.
 I love this picture of the very proud Grandma.

 And we're home again.



Once Ella has a fully belly and a clean diaper she love to stretch out. She does it every time.

















A very beautiful little girl.












--------------------trivia--------------------
Armadillos nearly always give birth to identical quadruplets.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Jack Abram Leavitt


Sharley was expecting to deliver her baby in early August but then it turned out that he was induced a few days early. We had a family pool betting on when the baby would be born. Technically Kira won the pool, but once Ben took Sharley to the hospital the night before, we decided to have a new pool for exactly what "time" the baby would be born.



Justin actually won the second pool. A month or two before Jack was born Ben and Sharley announced his name. He actually has a very cool name. Jack is named after three different people. Sharley has two little brothers who she is very close to. They are twins named Jacob and Zachary or Jake and Zach. If you combine their names you would get Jack so Jack's first name is for Sharley's twin brothers.


One of Bens closest friends growing up was Abram Jones. Abram was like a brother to Ben and like a son to us. Ben had a toothbrush and change of clothes at Abrams house, (right around the corner from us), and Abram had the same at our home. He never bothered knocking because he truly was one of the family. He even came on family vacations with us. Jack's middle name, Abram, is after Abram. For more on Abram go here. 

After a relatively mild labor Jack arrived at 11:36 on the morning of July 30. He was 7 pounds 4 ounces and twenty inches long. Ben used his Go Pro to make a pretty cool video of Jack coming home. I really hope the link below works because you will want to see the video. I have some pretty talented kids. Jack's arrival has made a lot of people very happy not the least of which are Ben and Sharley. Congratulations.

link to video

If the link doesn't work try cutting and pasting this address in your browser.
https://youtu.be/kpoy2yiRTQU









----------------------trivia--------------------
Maine is the closest U.S. state to Africa.
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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Evans Baptism

The other day Lisa pointed out to me that now that I'm no longer the coordinator at the temple I should have more time to be writing in my blog. I guess she is quite right, that job took at least nine hours a week so I aught to be able to write a couple of blogs in that time.

I often think that my life is quite boring and that is normally the case but the last few months have been filled with all kinds of adventure. Evan was baptized, Jack (Ben & Sharley) was born, Ella (Trevor & Alycia) was born, Jack was blessed, Sydney was baptized, and then Ella was blessed. We have made quite a few trips. Even though I haven't posted in a while I think the next few posts will just be reviewing some of our past excitements.

Today I want to talk about our trip to Canada. First of all we celebrated Lisa's birthday and then we headed north. Because Alex was coming with us we drove and picked him up in Utah. As it so happened we were in Salt Lake City on our thirty fourth wedding anniversary. We actually went to Salt Lake on our honeymoon so it was kind of fun to be there on our anniversary. In fact, Lisa being so thoughtful made reservations for us in the Roof Top restaurant of the Joseph Smith Building. We had a table overlooking the temple. It was very cool. We had a piano player and everything.

We then continued on north and went first to Kira and Justin's. Tuesday we celebrated Evan's birthday even though his birthday was the previous week. The next day, Wednesday,  was his baptism day.

Thursday we parted company. Alex went with Kira and her family to Evan's SMA camp at William Watson Lodge in the Kananaskis. It is a cool lodge that is completely accessible for wheelchairs. Lisa and I went to Rosemary to see Gary and Pat Norton, but on the way out of town we visited with Maurine, and then we stopped and visited with Bob and Virginia Lundrigan. They used to live in our stake here in San Diego. In fact he was the Stake Patriarch. He is really failing fast. He has dementia and lives in a home.

We stayed up way too late at the Norton's and then headed out of town the next morning. We headed for the C.F.B Lybbert reunion in Pincher Creek but went through Cardston to attend a reunion temple session. It was cool to be on a session with all of my relatives. After the session we checked out the sealing room where we were married and then we were invited to do sealings. We figured what better way to celebrate our anniversary. One of the temple workers was Royce Leavitt. He is the son of Aunt Marguerite  and Uncle Devere. They lived on the old Leavitt homestead and used to babysit me often when I was small. Uncle Devere has passed away but we decided to stop and visit Aunt Marguerite on the way out of town. She remembered me when I told her who I was, but I had to remind her who I was at least a dozen times. She kept going on about how beautiful Lisa is. I agree with her.

There was a damper on the reunion because it rained the whole time, but they let us use a few large quonsets and all we wanted to do anyway was sit and visit. I won't try and name all of the people I visited with because I won't possibly remember them all, but most of Uncle Van's and Aunt Grace's kids were there. In fact, Aunt Grace was actually there in person. I also visited with Wade Smith. He and his wife rode up from Wisconsin on their motorbike. I love to ride my motorbike, but a road trip like that doesn't really sound like too much fun. Especially in the rain.

Saturday we headed up to the Kananaskis to join up with Kira and her bunch. What a beautiful place that was. We road bikes with the kids and went Kayaking. Alberta really is a beautiful place. It is just too bad their weather is so horrible.

And then it was back to Calgary and then we headed south on Sunday. It was a fun and very eventful trip.

-------------------trivia--------------------
&; used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet. It was called "and" and when the school children would say their alphabet they would say. "...x, y, z and per se and". This gradually became shortened to "anpersand"
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